Mental Health Matters

a resource of Shalem Mental Health Network

Power in Relationships: Controlling or Empowering?

Sep 24, 2024 | Mental Health Matters

[7 minute read] 

TL;DR:  All relationships involve power. Power can be handled well to empower others or misused to control or abuse. In our partner relationships and families, we tend to handle power in either power-over or power-with ways, or sometimes neglect to use our power at all, which impacts the shape and quality of our relationships. Strong power imbalances risk becoming abusive. Things we can do to handle power well include talking about it, calling out misuses and abuses if safe to do so, and getting help when we don’t have the power to make changes on our own. Therapists and other professionals with knowledge of power dynamics in relationships can help.

Jump to:  Some things that can help | Resources

One of the issues that shows up regularly in counselling conversations has to do with how power is handled in relationships.

Power can often be invisible, but it is inevitably operating in all our relationships, sometimes in more healthy and efficient ways than others. Sometimes power is blatantly obvious in relationships, like when the boss makes decisions, for example, to regularly leave the office early, that the rest of the staff aren’t entitled to make.

We generally expect that some people will automatically have more power than others. Employers, teachers and parents are normally given positions of greater power and responsibility than employees, students and children in our society. But we all likely know of some employers, teachers or parents whose use of power over others is a little more extreme, or who abuse their positions of power.

Power in Families

Power imbalances can show up in our intimate partner relationships and family relationships as well. Older siblings tend to have more power than younger siblings due to their greater size and age, and their position in the family. This power might be used in helpful ways as an older sibling teaches the younger how to skateboard, or it might show up in unhealthy ways such as bullying.

Spouses often find themselves having to navigate power in their relationships, either implicitly or explicitly. Positions of higher power are sometimes claimed on the basis of having greater earnings, better health, a more important social position or family connection, or based on physical strength and size. Some faith or culture groups might assign positions of power based on gender, with men traditionally holding greater power than women.

Patterns of Power in Relationships

There are two primary patterns for how people experience and use power in relationships.

Power-Over

The first, often called “power-over,” is based on a hierarchical framework, shaped like a triangle, with power concentrated at the top. Examples of this include most businesses and organizations where there is a CEO, Principal or leader designated to set direction, make decisions and control the budget.

In some organizations, this position comes with a lot of entitlement—the corner office, the private secretary, and a bigger chunk of the budget, not to mention a higher salary. Often the CEO’s opinions hold more weight; their feelings or needs might be catered to, and their word becomes, well, if not law, pretty important. And if the employees don’t like it, they either put up with it or complain, but often find they don’t have the power to change it, setting up a sense of win/lose: the one with power always wins, and the ones in the bottom of the triangle lose out.

There are some advantages to operating with this power structure. It is a very effective and efficient way to do business and run a large company. It saves time and money when key decisions can be made by a CEO rather than being debated for months in an attempt to seek consensus. However, it generally doesn’t work well in families and personal relationships.

Power-With

The other main pattern is often described as “power-with.” It might be shaped more as a rectangle, with two people on an even level, or as a circle shape for a group. A power-with model is based on certain values and assumptions. It holds that each person’s needs, feelings, ideas and opinions are equally important and seeks to make space for all of them.

Power-with is characterized by people seeking to make decisions that meet everyone’s needs as much as possible, finding win-win solutions to the challenges being faced. Some organizations, such as certain women’s shelters or food co-operatives run this way, seeking to lead collaboratively and make decisions by consensus. Their choice to share power and work with each other shape how they do business.

Of course, these models are not mutually exclusive. Some corporations organized in a hierarchical structure hold highly to the values of doing relationships and leading from a position of “with” rather than doing things “to” or “for” their employees. And some organizations that operate from a collective find it helpful to hire someone to carry responsibility and organizational leadership.

So how do these different models show up in families?

Power-Over in Families

Some people live in triangle-shaped families, where one or both adults (or parents) use power-over to run the household and navigate family life. This might show up in different ways. Some families agree to divvy up power, for example, with one spouse being in charge of the finances and budget, and the other having the final say in terms of parenting decisions. Other families experience power-struggles and conflict over every spending decision or discipline moment.

Still other families have a clear, fixed power structure with one parent holding a position of greater power and privilege in the family. In some families, this might show up in ways that seem relatively innocuous, for example, a certain chair that is reserved for mom’s exclusive use. In other families, it might be more pronounced, like when Dad regularly vetoes family outings when he is in a bad mood, or when his moods control the emotional atmosphere in the house, leaving other family members feeling intimidated or walking on eggshells.

The other family members might handle being in a position of lower power by tiptoeing around trying to keep the peace, or by finding sly or sneaky ways to get their needs met, or protest the power imbalance through nagging and complaining, or even fighting back to try change the power dynamics.

And when the use of power and control over others becomes more extreme in a family, it can take the form of abuse: emotional, verbal, physical, financial or sexual abuse.

Power-With in Families

Families that use primarily power-with approaches to partnering and parenting appear very different. These families often emphasize choice and responsibility, seeking to empower each family member.

When a decision must be made, for example, about moving for a career opportunity, family meetings or dinner conversations might invite input from each one affected. And although the adults have the responsibility to make the final decision, they do so together with consideration of each family member’s feelings and needs. Such collaboration and consensus-building take time and patience, but serve to empower the whole family.

Neglect of Power in Families

Some parents, perhaps in an effort to avoid the misuse of power-over tactics that they were subjected to as children, end up giving away their power and responsibility, often to kids too young to handle it.

When parents abdicate their responsibility and neglect to lead the family or set boundaries or bed-times, children become entitled rather than empowered, and parents come to feel beleaguered and walked-over.

Handling Power Well

It is often a hard thing to negotiating power in relationships and families. We don’t generally learn how to do so in school, and so we often end up repeating the patterns we grew up with or trying to do the opposite. 

Some things that can help:

1 Talking about power directly — Making the power dynamics explicit by talking about them and naming what is happening in relationships can be an important and effective way to address this topic.

2 Calling out misuses and abuses of power if safe to do so — We can empower ourselves and each other to call out misuses and abuses of power. We can invite our partners and family members into healthier power interactions. Sometimes that means calling for a change in how the relationships operate.

3 Recognizing when you don’t have the power to make things change on your own — One caution, however. It is important to recognize that in triangle-shaped families or relationships, when there is a large imbalance of power, the one(s) with less power are unable to effect change. They simply don’t have the power to do so, and often any efforts they make to do power differently are seen as attempts to usurp the power of the one in the top of the triangle.

The one using power-over might increase their efforts at control, or find ways to punish or intimidate the others for what they perceive as them trying to take control. Such power moves might be escalated by those who believe they are entitled to their position of power, and become increasingly abusiveness and dangerous.

4 Getting help — When power is used in abusive ways, it is generally safest to not seek to address the abuse of power on one’s own, but to seek help from a therapist, women’s shelter, or other professionals with expertise in dealing with domestic violence, abuse or control in relationships.

Faith-based views of power

Models of power have often been debated, particularly among faith communities in which, historically, hierarchical forms of power predominated.

For example, in the Christian faith, models of church leadership and family order based on complementarian beliefs and principles of male headship typically defend a power-over model of relationships for marriage and family, even while denouncing the abuse of power in such models.

Other people within Christian faith communities point to Jesus’ incarnation as a model for setting aside one’s power in order to serve others, and to the empowerment by the Holy Spirit as the ultimate example of divine use of “power-with.”

What most faith groups hold in common, however, is a recognition that power, as with any other resource, is meant to be stewarded responsibly, with an accounting required for how it is used.

Use it well.

Susan Winter Fledderus is a Clinical Therapist with Shalem Mental Health Network

Resources

Help for when power is used abusively:

Additional Reading

The Verbally Abusive Relationship by Patricia Evans

Keeping the Faith: Guidance for Christian Women Facing Abuse by Marie Fortune

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